My mesh no longer follows my armature
A mesh can be modified by an armature only if it has an armature modifier pointing to the skeleton.

To bring back your animation add an armature modifier to the mesh and select your armature in its "Object" field.



As a good workflow advice, I suggest you not to animate the whole armature as object, instead you should use only bones and only in pose mode (you will have to set some bones as child of  a main bone, maybe the bigger one).